Page 6 – HeartMath

Broadcasting Love

Posted on June 10, 2022 | by HeartMath

Heart coherence does not disesteem the mind; it increases the mind’s potentials for balanced viewpoints which are more inclusive of the whole. Our basic systems (heart, mind, emotions, and body) create more harmony and fulfillment when working in cooperation to shape our lives for the better.

The practice of sitting in heart rhythm coherence for even a few minutes accumulates higher-vibrational energy that has a carryover effect through our day; it provides more clarity and ability to access flow. This often draws creative solutions where there seem to be none. In a coherent vibration we draw more synchronicities and clearer choices, along with heightened heart textures of love in our life’s interactions. We don’t have to be perfect without challenges to maintain a coherent life expression. It simply requires general maintenance, like any practice that helps to steer our decisions and behaviors.

Scientific research is showing that as people practice heart coherence, it generates an energetic field that makes it easier for others to connect with their heart— leading to greater understanding of each other and social coherence. It’s our individual job to become responsible for our own energy which raises the vibration of the collective energy field, making it easier for others to access their higher potentials and increased joy.

Exercises to Expand Our Capacity to Love

• Make a commitment to consciously broadcast or radiate love for a minute or two in between and during activities during the day or whenever you think of it. Realize that you are especially radiating love when you’re feeling appreciation and kindness, resonance with nature, warm-hearted care for family, friends, pets, etc.

• Practice breathing love and caring feelings into the environment wherever you are: shopping, on the phone, at the dinner table, watching the news, in meetings, while driving or walking to work, etc. As you do this, know that it’s helping to increase your capacity for finding solutions to life’s challenges.

• Sit for a while in relaxed stillness and imagine breathing love and healthy thoughts into all your cells. This enhances your immune, hormonal, and nervous systems which can help with self-healing. Remember it’s been proven in respected studies that love energy can effect positive changes in biology.

• Practice radiating love and latitude into future meetings or interactions you’re planning. This sets a tone for deeper listening from your heart and helps you maintain or recoup emotional poise if needed.

What Do You Do When You Wake Up Grumpy?

Posted on May 23, 2022 | by HeartMath

What Do You Do When…

What do you do when you wake up and, for no apparent reason, you feel out of sorts, grumpy, low energy, anxious, and just not connected to your heart in general?

What Is This?

You’ve been having a good week and now feel this way.

You start to try to figure it out. What is going wrong? What’s wrong with me?

Why Now?

You can take a look at events, interactions, and so on that may have contributed to your low-feeling world.

But you can also try to see it in a new way.

You’re experiencing a “modulation day.”

Life has rhythms—highs, lows, going in and out. (Life modulates.)

Sometimes our emotions do the same thing. Our emotions modulate too, and it’s natural that you won’t feel as connected to the rejuvenating feelings of the heart on days like this.

Here’s What You Can Do

Perhaps do a short, heart-focused exercise.

Just breathe a feeling of ease in and out through your heart area.
Then add the feeling of self-compassion.

If you can, see yourself as a good person doing the best you can. If you can’t feel ease or self-compassion, it’s okay. Your efforts will pay off soon enough.

During your day, take little moments in between activities and, again, just try to connect with a feeling of ease and self-compassion.

Also, try to show some extra kindness or appreciation for others. This can help get the emotional qualities of the heart flowing more easily.

Don’t look for immediate results. Have patience with the process. And try not to make whatever you’re feeling feel overly significant. In due time, you’ll start to feel more like your best self.

Remember, it’s just a modulation day and no big deal.

Life has a rhythm and flow to it. With a little meaningfulness, you can learn to make peace with modulation days and use them to further your inner growth.

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The HeartMath Experience

Science is discovering the major role that the heart plays in how well our brain functions, and understanding that this connection is not only about physical health – it affects the quality of life, relationships, perceptions and mental habits and self-limitations. Research shows we can intentionally influence this connection to improve our mental, emotional and physical well-being. Get free access now to an online video program (Videos captioned in twelve languages – with 9 chapters) that explains the connection and gives you tools to strengthen and optimize this connection.

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Cultivating Inner Stillness

Posted on May 6, 2022 | by HeartMath

It’s highly effective to schedule times for practice of inner stillness to allow our heart, mind, and emotions to experience a relaxed time-out from competing over the choices we make. Stillness softens our determined mental and emotional traffic so that our heart-speak can be heard. This requires practice because the mind will try to occupy any available space if the door is left cracked. However, if stillness practices didn’t produce high-value results, think of all the centuries of time that meditators and spiritually conscious people would have wasted throughout history. With fine-tuning, inner stillness becomes like a personal elevator to our highest view and eliminates the weariness from climbing endless stairs. I feel that practicing inner stillness will become a most positive corner-turning step forward for humanity, not as a trend or religious motivation but as a street-sense way of life. You can try this inner stillness exercise that I found valuable for deepening my connection to my heart’s intelligent guidance.

Inner Stillness Exercise:

Step 1: As you breathe quietly, imagine your breath calmly slowing down the vibration of your mental and emotional energy. Stay with it and don’t care if your mind disrupts you. This will improve with patience and practice. To get benefits out of this stillness exercise, you don’t have to totally stop the mind—even reducing thoughts and calming yourself improves your capacity to sense your heart feelings and suggestions. In a short amount of time, the power to quieten your mind will increase.

Step 2: As you feel your energy calming, genuinely radiate love to something or someone you care about. This connects you with your heart energy.

Step 3: While maintaining your state of calmness, ask your heart for guidance, solutions, or deeper understanding regarding life issues you are experiencing.

Step 4: Imagine stillness as a peaceful place where you are taking a time-out. As thoughts come up, don’t push against them. Casually refocus on breathing love and peace into the stillness. Our higher choices become more obvious as we increase our capacity to listen in stillness to our heart’s intelligent guidance.

Note: When you’re listening for intuition, don’t expect a Siri or an Alexa-type attendant on the other end with a download of answers. Especially on complex issues, intuitive feeling answers often come later—through something someone says, something you read, while you’re in the shower, driving down the road, etc.

Special Care Focus – Collective Compassion for Ukraine

Posted on March 21, 2022 | by HeartMath

Collective Compassion for Ukraine

There has been a global outpouring of collective compassion since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war for all the people who are suffering, have lost loved ones, lost their homes, and had their whole lives displaced.

Many people around the world watching the news are experiencing heightened fear, insecurity, outrage, and feelings of powerlessness. Many are calling from their minds and hearts to please Stop this War! “War is outmoded,” said the Dalai Lama, and most all of us feel that in the core of our hearts.

Across the planet, people are experiencing stress overload from their emotional responses to the atrocities. This is understandable. However, for your own wellbeing, occasionally take a time out somewhere and breathe the feeling of balance and calm from your spirit for a while. Envision this renewing your mental, emotional and physical nature. Doing this from the heart can restore resilience and help with the stress.

Let’s also keep increasing our care and compassion for each other and for ourselves. In whatever way we choose to send compassionate care, it’s important to keep the continuity of our collective compassion going out to all people affected by this war. Do this as you can, according to your life’s circumstances. All love counts, even if we can’t always see the ways that it helps.

Care Focus Collective Compassion for Ukraine

Start with quiet breathing while radiating feelings of love and care for someone, a pet, nature, etc. This helps open and warm the heart which increases the effectiveness of the Care Focus.
Now, let’s send our deepest care and compassion to people directly affected by the Russia-Ukraine war. This includes the people of Ukraine, soldiers and refugees, many people in Russia who are saddened with pain in their hearts regarding the invasion, and many others throughout the planet.
Next, send compassion and gratitude to the people and countries taking in millions of refugees. Send heart that those who support this war might open their hearts to the pain the war is causing and realize the setback it is inflicting on nations, much less the world community.
Now, see our deep heart’s care contributing to a global heart awakening of collective compassion that’s on the rise as a result of this war.
Let’s close by envisioning that humanity will realize that war is a thing of the past and that we need to come together in the heart to work things out.

It is effective to continue doing this Care Focus or individual steps of it after the full moon period, if convenient. The planet is calling for continuity of collective compassion going out to all people affected by this war.

Adapted with permission. Originally published by the HeartMath Institute for the Global Coherence Initiative Care Focus.

Unconditional love and compassion are among the highest vibrations of love

Posted on February 22, 2022 | by HeartMath

Article updated February 2022, originally published, August, 2017

HeartMath and many systems use the term vibration in reference to the quality of attitudes, thoughts, feelings and emotions that are generated and influenced by our beliefs, memories, choices, environmental stimuli and more.

For example, you often hear people say, “I had to leave that office, the vibes were so low it was draining my energy, or, “I felt a lift from being in her positive vibration.”

The vibration of our moods, attitudes, thoughts and feelings can rise and fall throughout the day based on our actions and reactions to others, ourselves, or to life’s issues. The vibes we put out vary based on our resilience for balancing our mind, emotions and disposition – especially in today’s dynamic emotional climate.

Part of being human means from time to time we’ll feel lower-level vibrations like being frustrated, angry, disappointed, or sad. But we can also shift out of these debilitating feelings and lift our attitudes and perceptions.

Feelings like care, compassion, kindness, inner ease, patience and gratitude lift our vibration. Anyone who experiences these qualities knows their power to shift our outlook.

Most all of us feel more self-secure when our vibes are up, yet maintaining this in the midst of challenges and stress can sometimes be tough. The good news is that we can learn to lift our vibration to meet challenges by adding more care, kindness and compassion in our interactions. Being in a lower vibration isn’t bad, it’s just that we feel better and are more effective when our spirits are lifted.

Many of us have personally experienced the benefits of compassion – and increasingly more and more people are resonating with this powerful expression of love especially in these times of robust change. Practicing compassion is something we can all do that benefits everyone.

Try these two simple exercises to lift your vibration when your feelings are down.

Find a quiet place where, for a few minutes, you can breathe easily, imagining with each breath that your mind, emotions and body are becoming still inside. In this stillness, desire the uplifting feeling you would like to have, and as you breathe, imagine breathing this new feeling into your being for a while. Imagine you are creating it with your breath.

Find a quiet place where, for a few minutes, you can breathe easily, imagining with each breath that your mind, emotions and body are becoming still inside. In this stillness, desire the uplifting feeling you would like to have, and as you breathe, imagine breathing this new feeling into your being for a while. Imagine you are creating it with your breath.
If you’re feeling low, try sitting quietly and imagine radiating love, compassion and stillness into your mental and emotional nature. Self-care is often allowing ourselves to have a low moment without compounding it with self-criticism.

When our light is dim, it helps to give ourselves the feeling of compassionate heart warmth. Even if it doesn’t stop the pain, we know it can help energetically.

You can soon feel a difference when doing these exercises, unless extremely challenged. If it doesn’t work the first time, be patient and simply try again later. Being genuine makes the difference. Practicing for a few days in a row strengthens your capacity to reset unwanted thoughts, feelings and attitudes.

Simple exercises such as these can lift your happiness and outlook more than you may think. Make it fun to consciously raise the vibration of your thoughts and feelings throughout the day to match who you are in your heart of hearts. Watch your spirit lift and the stress accumulation diminish.

These practices especially help to open our heart more in our interactions, which is often the missing piece in our pursuit for peace.

Love matters.

These exercises have been adapted with the author’s permission for this article. Read the full exercises and other helpful suggestions, in the book, Heart Intelligence: Connecting with the Heart’s Intuitive Guidance for Effective Choices and Solutions.

Adapted with permission from the HeartMath Institute.

Releasing Separation

Posted on October 15, 2021 | by HeartMath

Releasing Separation

How to Get Along with Each Other

The polarizing political environment is waking up more people to the realization that it’s time we decide to get along with each other. Our prejudices and biases are coming to the surface to be addressed from the intelligence of the heart. The heart reveals our common humanity and can see new opportunities for creativity in diversity if we embrace it. It’s time for inclusive care, respect, and cooperation to be practiced past the limitations of our personal viewpoints and preferences. This can change the course of many unfavorable events in our personal and collective lives.

Our heart’s intelligent guidance can help clear our biases that block our tolerance for each other’s differences. Most of us feel a desire for more harmonious and cooperative interactions, but we have to step into it with our heart’s intention to release habits of separation. It is possible to integrate care, kindness, and compassionate latitude into our daily interactions yet allow for our differences without creating separation. We’ve tried everything else to get along with each other except using our heart’s intuitive guidance and care. More people are realizing this is the missing piece in our interactions and in our quest for solutions.

We can each make a conscious practice to release our habits of separation. It’s beneficial to ask your heart where you’re being too judgmental with people or keeping them at arm’s length with separation or bias. This could be an individual, group, religion, race, etc. Practice sending or radiating from your heart the feelings of acceptance, compassion, and forgiveness to help release separation and judgment. Radiating these heart feelings has a cumulative effect that can facilitate families, workplaces, and communities to open their hearts more and listen respectfully to each other’s views.

It’s getting more obvious that the more we shut off our hearts to each other, the worse a situation gets. We’ve seen this in families, personal relationships, and between nations. Life is calling (shouting) for a change. The effectiveness of collective heart power is still in its early stages—yet it’s on the rise due to the increase of stress, anxiety and depression, and a desperate need for solutions that the mind, without the heart, can’t deliver. As the heart, mind, and emotions resonate in coherent alignment, this allows more spirit and heart energy to move through individual and collective intentions. From there, co-creative solutions have a chance to emerge. Let’s start with our own care and compassion to make things better.

Releasing Separation: A Heart Meditation

HeartMath · Releasing Separation Meditation

Download Audio File

Center yourself in the heart, and breathe appreciation to warm your heart and increase your focus.
Connect with your heart’s intention to create more feelings of acceptance, compassion, and care in your interactions with others and within yourself.
Consciously practice these feelings and attitudes for a week or so, and they will increasingly become automatic at times. This can progressively increase your emotional stability and resilience. It can also do much for preventing and decreasing stress accumulation.
Let’s visualize our collective heart energy helping to stabilize chaotic emotional energies that feed separations and biases within individuals and leaders and block effective solutions that are best for the whole.
Now envision enough people opening their hearts and setting aside their differences to create a more heart-based world. As hearts open more, there is a natural inner prompting to create ways to get along with each other, cooperate, and co-create solutions for the benefit of all. That’s who we are at the core.
Let’s close by radiating our compassionate care to all who are suffering hardships during the present global challenges.

Adapted with permission. Originally published by the HeartMath Institute for the Global Coherence Initiative Care Focus.

Increasing Resilience Enhances Decision Making

Posted on October 1, 2021 | by HeartMath

The dictionary describes a decision as “the act of reaching a conclusion or making up one’s mind.” According to new scientific research, this is only part of the story. One of the most intriguing findings in recent research is that one’s feelings are involved in the process of making decisions as much as, or even more than, one’s mind.

When we’re balanced and coherent, our minds become far more effective, sharp, and clear. It boils down to this: when we’re stressed, we lose our emotional balance and are prone to making poor decisions. When we’re emotionally coherent and balanced, we’re poised to make better decisions that will help serve us and everyone concerned.

The Freeze Frame technique was designed to clear the mind in order to make the best decisions. Here are the steps:

The Freeze Frame^® Technique:

1: Acknowledge the problem

Acknowledge the problem or issue and any attitudes or feelings about it.

2: Focus your attention in the area of the heart.

Focus your attention in the area of the heart. Imagine your breath is flowing in and out of your heart or chest area, breathing a little slower and deeper than usual.

Suggestion: Inhale 5 seconds, exhale 5 seconds (or whatever rhythm is comfortable)

3: Make a sincere attempt to experience a regenerative feeling

Make a sincere attempt to experience a regenerative feeling such as appreciation or care for someone or something in your life.

4: Ask yourself…

From this more objective place, ask yourself what would be a more efficient or effective attitude, action or solution.

5: Quietly observe any subtle changes

Quietly observe any subtle changes in perceptions, attitudes or feelings. Commit to sustaining beneficial attitude shifts and acting on new insights.

Quick Steps:

Acknowledge
Heart-Focused Breathing
Activate a positive or renewing feeling
Ask
Observe and Act

Hopefully you’ve gotten a better sense of what the decision needs to be. You may not have a crystal clear answer but perhaps you feel calmer and less stressed about this decision. If you didn’t get more clarity, or you’re unsure of what your heart is saying, go through the steps again.

Solution for Overcoming Sleeplessness

Posted on September 30, 2021 | by HeartMath

Updated article. Original published February, 2014

Guided Meditation for a Better Night’s Sleep

Try this 3 minute guided heart mediation led by HeartMath’s Howard Martin, to help you shift from stress and prepare for a great night’s sleep.

HeartMath · Sleep Meditation

Download Audio File

If you struggle to fall asleep or wake up in the middle of the night and can’t get back to sleep, and this persists for a few days, a few weeks or longer, you suffer from sleeplessness, a serious disorder that robs your body of the rest it requires to re-energize you physically, mentally and emotionally.

Up to 90% of all health problems are related to stress. Additionally, a large body of research confirms our thoughts and emotions have a dynamic effect on our health and vitality.”
The American Institute of Stress

A typical form of sleeplessness also referred to as insomnia, occurs when you wake up during the night, realize you are wide-awake when you should be sleeping and then become anxious. The anxiety causes adrenaline to flood the system and adrenaline prompts the body into action – the opposite of what you need for effective sleep.

If this sounds like you, you’re not alone. Sleeplessness affects all age groups. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reports that about 60 million Americans suffer from insomnia each year. The National Sleep Foundation reports that disordered sleep – difficulty falling asleep, light sleep or nonrestorative sleep for several nights or more weekly – affects nearly two-thirds of American adults at some point. It’s believed that sleeplessness increases as we grow older. More than half of older Americans have trouble sleeping and think it’s a part of aging. It’s not.

Sleep problems in the elderly are not a normal part of aging

Dr. Julie Gammack, assistant professor of geriatrics at Saint Louis University.

Inadequate sleep adds to an increased risk of accidents, falls, and chronic fatigue. Our children and teens, too, are having trouble sleeping.

Difficulty falling asleep is the most common complaint among adolescents. In a national survey on the sleep patterns of U.S. adolescents ages 11-17, the Sleep in America poll by the National Sleep Foundation found only 20% of adolescents were getting the recommended nine hours of sleep on school nights and 45% slept less than eight hours.

What’s Causing Your Sleeplessness?

Stress is a leading cause of abnormal sleep patterns. Research shows it is a common trigger for both short-term and chronic insomnia. Stress can result from health concerns, depression and anxiety among other things, but perhaps the most insidious cause is the fast-paced world in which we live. Technology, world events and our ever-increasing knowledge about our world and the universe seem to have put time on a relentless treadmill and keeping up can wear out even the most determined among us. Scientific research by the HeartMath Institute shows stress creates incoherence in our heart rhythms, and when the heart is out of sync normal sleep patterns can be interrupted.

3 Tips to Reset Your Body’s Rhythm

It’s time to try a system reset so you can return to a healthy sleep rhythm. But first some abbreviated science.

Our heart beats in a rhythm. Research at the HeartMath Institute found that when we are over-stimulated, overwhelmed, stressed or worried this rhythm becomes irregular and incoherent.

Conversely, positive feelings, like love, care or appreciation can smooth out our heart rhythm into a harmonious coherent pattern and help prepare the body for sleep.

Reset with these three practical solutions:

Plant the seeds for good sleep with the Quick Coherence^® Technique

Sleep practices need to include what happens during the day not just once the sun goes down. Doing a few 1-2 minute Quick Coherence^® Technique sessions during the day can minimize the build-up of stress. Accumulated stress is a common cause of disrupted sleep patterns.

Once in bed, practice Attitude Breathing™

Close your eyes and tell yourself you aren’t going to over-dramatize anything that happened during the day or any concerns you may have about sleeping. Use the heart-focused technique we call Attitude Breathing™ to create a coherent heart rhythm that can facilitate deeper and more effective sleep:

Steps for Attitude Breathing

Recognize a feeling or attitude that you want to change and identify a replacement attitude.
Focus your attention in the area of the heart. Imagine your breath is flowing in and out of your heart or chest area, breathing a little slower and deeper than usual.
Suggestion: Inhale 5 seconds, exhale 5 seconds (or whatever rhythm is comfortable)
Breathe the feeling of the new attitude slowly and casually through your heart area.

Practice the this exercise for a few minutes. Coherent heart rhythms help release beneficial hormones that reduce stress and restore your system.

Technology can help

Take out the mental figuring and use HeartMath’s emWave2^® or Inner Balance^™ technologies. Use these tech assistants combined with the above techniques to simplify the process as they guide you into a peaceful rhythm of heart coherence.

HeartMath techniques are demonstrated to provide powerful stress-reduction benefits in carefully designed scientific studies that are supported by a documented reduction in damaging stress hormones.

Paul Rosch, President, The American Institute of Stress

Our Capacity to Broadcast Love

Posted on February 1, 2021 | by HeartMath

All people have the capacity to love, but few of us understand the benefits of intentionally radiating love into our environment.

There are many personal and collective benefits from intentionally radiating love. Here are a few:

The practice of sending love helps to quiet the overactive mind and emotions, which increases our ability to handle the elevated stress on the planet. Increasing love and compassion automatically streams more patience, resilience and flow into our interactions. This helps to clear clouded discernment and heightens our reasoning capacity.

With the polarizing politics going on in many countries and the global resurgence of the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s more important than ever to broadcast love, compassion and calm into the global energetic field.

Love is the core heart frequency that unifies and lifts people’s perceptions above separation. When our heart, mind and emotions are in alignment and not in conflict with each other, this makes it easier to sense our intuitive heart’s direction for effective choices and guidance.

Radiating love has a cumulative effect that helps us increase our initiative to act on important intentions and commitments that are challenging to get started or follow through with.

The practice of intentionally sending love will create an automatic tendency to precede with interactions from a more loving spirit, resulting in more harmony and less stress in our relationships. Sending love also helps to soften the energetic field around us, making it easier for others to access their hearts and experience deeper resonance and genuine connection.

The impact of collective heart power in the world is still in its early stages – yet it’s on the rise now due to the increase of stress and the desperate need for solutions that the mind can’t deliver without the heart. We are running out of ways to find happiness and peace without opening our hearts in order to get along with each other through kindness, cooperation and a respect for our cultural differences. This is a job for love that can’t be substituted.

Many of us understand this, but remembering to practice sending love is what can make all the difference.

Rethinking Love as a Valuable Resource for Happiness

Robert Browning, a HeartMath Master Trainer, talks about love as a creative resource. His thoughts on this are inspiring and help us to rethink love as more than a romantic notion.

Suggested Practice:

Let’s make a commitment to broadcast or radiate love for a minute or two during and in between daily activities and whenever we think of it. Breathe in and radiate love wherever and whenever you think of it: while shopping, when you’re on the phone, watching the news, with family or friends, before and during meetings, while driving or while walking somewhere. Let’s do this for a week or longer to reset our system with increased resilience, clearer thinking and more effective choices.

As we practice broadcasting love, we may not always feel the love. The feeling modulates at times, but that’s okay. It is our sincere intent that eventually increases our level of effectiveness and sets up a baseline for radiating love to become more automatic.

Suggested Steps for Broadcasting Love

Focus on your heart and breathe in the feeling of love or appreciation that you have for someone or something you care about. This increases the effectiveness of your heart intention.
Now feel your heart connecting with others across the planet who are sending love and compassion into the energetic field to help raise the heart vibration of humanity and reduce the collective stress.
Radiate love and compassion with the intention to help ease the suffering that so many are experiencing, and to heal the separations, judgments and divisiveness that are creating global waves of stress, anxiety and uncertainty. As you practice broadcasting love, feel that you are contributing to the highest, best outcome for all.
Now make a commitment to broadcast or radiate love during and in between activities or, as often as you can remember, to people, situations or issues that you care about.

Appreciate the benefits that you notice from doing this simple yet effective practice.

We’d love to hear about your experiences from broadcasting love. Feel free to post them in the discussion below.

Adapted with permission. Originally published by the HeartMath Institute for the Global Coherence Initiative Care Focus.

Taking Care of Yourself and Each Other

Posted on August 13, 2020 | by HeartMath

While coronavirus is declining or under control in many countries, it’s spreading faster than ever in other countries. Doctors and nurses are overwhelmed and exhausted, hospitals are running short on ICU space and supplies, and stress levels are high.

Many of us have a hard time wearing face masks or find ourselves in situations that make it difficult to maintain social distancing. It’s understandably challenging when precautions are inconvenient and a lockdown affects jobs and families. Still, it would be helpful for our wholeness if we could find it in our hearts to practice safety precautions to help prevent others’ being infected.

Shelter-at-home restrictions and limited social gatherings exacerbate loneliness, anxiety and depression. A lift in your spirit and resilience can occur with the practice of radiating love and compassion for a minute or so throughout the day (each time we think of it).

Doing this for a week can help significantly. Also, many of you have already experienced the lift that comes from the practice of doing something kind for another.

Research shows that really putting out love and compassionate care benefits not only your health, but also the health of others. In 23 published studies on distance healing, 57% showed statistically significant positive psychological and biological changes associated with improved health, including lowered blood pressure, reduced stress and anxiety, an increased immune response, enhanced hormonal balance and the promotion of positive mood states.

Here are a few other effective actions we can take to care for each other and ourselves.

Before watching the news, take a few minutes to breathe in the feeling of mental and emotional balance to strengthen your composure and stability. Doing this can especially reduce stress from over emotionally identifying with the challenges and fears that people are experiencing. There’s a difference between feeling balanced care and compassion and feeling extreme emotional reactivity, which has been proven to cause health problems, acute anxiety and loss of resilience. However, it’s smart to back off watching the news for a few days if you’re already overstressed. This will help rebalance your mental and emotional system and restore your resilience. It’s also helpful to find somewhere to walk in nature. Even if you have ongoing worry, nature can provide renewing benefits.

Try to have more conversations about something other than your current stressors. Research has shown that rehashing stressful situations in conversation increases neurochemicals that drain your mental and emotional vitality and create incoherence in your discerning process. Sure, it’s hard to not talk about some of these issues. However, with your heart’s intention, you can reduce replaying these looping stress patterns by being more mindful in your conversations. Every effort helps, especially when stress levels are high.

Many people are reporting that this next exercise helps them more than anything else.

Wherever you go, radiate love and care to people and your environment – home, workplace, stores, social gatherings, outdoors, etc. Doing this as often as you can for a week or more strengthens your resilience and stability while helping you rise above or prevent some of the stressors that block clear thinking for higher choices. It takes a little practice to remember to radiate love and care, but it’s definitely worth the time spent. Set up phone or written reminders. Sometimes you won’t feel your heart as much – that’s normal, as heart energy modulates from time to time. Do the exercise anyway to help anchor it into your memory, which is important. This is one of our highest recommendations for reducing stress, improving well-being and staying emotionally grounded.

More and more people are waking up to the power of love and care as the solution to our personal and societal challenges. Love is a transformational intelligence that raises our vibration for drawing in new solutions we haven’t thought of yet and provides multiple benefits. The need for love has been philosophized about for eons, and now is the time for us to bring it to the street, practice more love and kindness in our interactions and reap the practical and proven benefits.

Taking Care of Yourself and Each Other:

A Heart Meditation

Take a minute or two to breathe in the feeling of genuine appreciation for someone or something you care about. This helps to activate heart feelings, which increases the effectiveness of this heart meditation.

Feel your heart connecting with others across the planet who are sending love and care to help reduce the collective stress and raise the heart vibration of humanity.

While radiating love and care, see people increasingly treating each other with more compassion, kindness and cooperation and taking safety precautions for themselves and others.

Now let’s send sincere appreciation, love and compassion to frontline workers, caregivers and all those helping others through this pandemic. Also, send compassionate care and heart warmth to the thousands of people who have lost loved ones during these times.

Close by sending compassionate care to people suffering from the pandemic and the many other societal and global challenges. Ask your heart to direct some of your heart energy to any of the challenges or issues that you care about and that are close to your heart.

It is the deeper connection with our own heart and with the hearts of others that will help draw in intuitive solutions for personal and societal challenges.

*Note: This heart meditation, also called a Care Focus, was originally published by the HeartMath Institute for the Global Coherence Initiative August 2020 Synchronized Care Focus.

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Broadcasting Love

Exercises to Expand Our Capacity to Love

What Do You Do When You Wake Up Grumpy?

What Do You Do When…

What Is This?

Why Now?

Here’s What You Can Do

Cultivating Inner Stillness